ON THE NHL: Hockey players don't need the NHL

AP Photo
Phialdelphia Flyer Wayne Simmonds (17), of the New Jersey team, collides with the New York team’s Jeff Halpern (15) during the third period of a charity hockey game in Atlantic City, N.J., Saturday. New York won 10-6.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. —About 75 minutes before the puck dropped at Atlantic City Convention Hall Saturday night to benefit the victims of a natural disaster, the music started to echo through the empty arena.

“’Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life / Try to make ends meet, you’re a slave to money, then you die.”

Those lyrics by The Verve seemed too fitting a choice to be coincidence, what with the NHL already committed to murdering at least half of the 2012-13 season thanks to a lockout. It is a league that enslaved itself to this mess by adding too many teams, trying too hard to dip its hand into the honey pot of America south of the Mason-Dixon line, constantly contorting everything about the league (rules, divisions, what counts as a win, loss or tie) in a pointless attempt to be something it’s not — namely, the NFL, NBA, or MLB.

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The NHL has become a man-made disaster, a league that eight years ago scrapped a season, and is getting dangerously close to doing it again. Yet Saturday night a collection of players — many of them Flyers and Rangers, or former players of said teams — got together for an exhibition game to help those whose lives were turned upside-down by Hurricane Sandy. The building was filled to capacity — the first time the building was full for a hockey game since, no joke, 1933 — and hockey sweaters (not the Atlantic Ocean) flooded the boardwalk.

On one hand, fans are fed up with the NHL and the way it goes about its business.

On the other hand, fans are pining for the sport of hockey.

This begs the question: Does hockey really need the NHL?

If this had to be answered with rational thought, the answer is “of course.” The owners have control of the arenas in the major cities. They own the history, the logos, the merchandise … attempting to go rogue would be brutally difficult.

Now that the reality of it has been addressed, here is the flip side: If the NHL can’t even get its act together enough to avoid having two seasons cancelled in a nine-year span, would it really be all that much of a leap for players, current and former, to organize as investors and build a league themselves that is about, let’s say, PLAYING THE GAME?

“Players think across the board about what can be done,” players’ union head Donald Fehr said. “But what you’ve got to remember, the players did not initiate and were not responsible for the lockout in ’94, they were not responsible for the lockout in 2004, and they did not initiate and were not responsible for the lockout here. All those decisions were made on the other side of the table.”

Actually, most fans are coming to understand this. League commissioner Gary Bettman has been overwhelmingly christened as the villain of this mess. Fans were interviewed over the public-address system during the game, and their message was simple: We just want hockey back — hockey, not the NHL.

Once upon a time Twinkies were the king of junk food cakes. But time passed and trans fats did as well, and a healthy dose of mismanagement sent Hostess into liquidation last week.

So, why not liquidate the NHL? Fehr wouldn’t confirm it, but the players are scheming to decertify and go after the league’s antitrust standing. That could turn an ugly process into an out-and-out brawl.

There are a lot of difficulties in players going out on their own. But one of those issues isn’t a television deal. The NHL already has terrible ratings and gets chump change from its TV contract compared to the other three major sports. While the NBA takes in nearly $1 billion each season for national TV rights, the NHL has a deal that gives it one-fifth of that amount for each of the next 10 years — when it actually plays games.

There’s nothing more a network wants to do more than stick it to a rival. NBC/Comcast made its commitment to the NHL. If the players put a rival league on the table, some network will get involved in the funding.

Someday, players in a pro league are going to realize they don’t have to be slaves to ownership’s money, that they have enough money themselves to become venture capitalists with the craft only they can perform.

If two blown-up seasons in nine years doesn’t get them there, then all these players will be are pawns to a league that has been failing them for decades.